


Welcome to Death Manor

by MayLaNee



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Family Drama, Gen, Haunted Houses, Haunting, Loss of Parent(s), Misery, Mother-Son Relationship, Parent Death, Piano, Post-War, War Crimes
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-12
Updated: 2020-06-12
Packaged: 2021-03-03 19:09:12
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,604
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24680605
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MayLaNee/pseuds/MayLaNee
Summary: A home without inhabitants is just a house.Decay sets in much quicker when there is no source of life to fuel it.The walls have ears.The ceilings have eyes.The floor remembers.
Comments: 5
Kudos: 5





	Welcome to Death Manor

**Author's Note:**

> A decade ago I wrote 'Irony Strikes', a very brief fake Daily Prophet article. A few weeks ago the idea struck me to use a similar premise and make it a proper story. The oneshot you're currently reading was originally written as a chapter, but it didn't fit in the flow of the thing and it works well enough as a standalone.  
> If you like the hopeless little world depicted here, please keep your eyes peeled for my first drarry.

A home without inhabitants is just a house.  
Decay sets in much quicker when there is no source of life to fuel it.

Likewise, a person without a soul is just a body.

Some people enter a room and instantly demand attention.  
Others may enter it twice before they are acknowledged at all.

But everybody leaves an impression.

The walls have ears.  
The ceilings have eyes.  
The floor remembers.

There was a darkness in the manor, drenched into its foundations.

The grand marble staircase in the entrance hall, once glorious and elegant, now looked brittle and lost like an ancient carcass.  
The supporting pillars hardly held one's gaze - there was a deficit in them, as if their reality had left them a little.

The hall felt empty.

Barren.

Piano music could be heard, a melody that seemed off, even to those unfamiliar with the finer things in life.

Beyond the staircase to the right, there was a double doorway.

Something about these doors - polished wood beset with glass, in their medieval ornate frame - seemed fragile, though there was not a crack in them. The weakness was on the inside.

They stood ajar and silently promised to fall off their hinges at any moment.

Beyond them was a drawing room, another grand affair.

Its walls were lined with tapestries depicting scenes which added character without distracting from its class.  
The floor was a dark polished wood, its grain visible for effect. To the right a fireplace roared, its mantel carved in ebony, a delicate metal fire grate depicted an imposing M amid its vertical bars.

Seating options were available nearby, a chaise longue, a sofa, and three chairs, each in matching delicate colours, neatly arranged around a coffee table on which lay nothing, nothing at all.

The effect of the room as a whole was dizzying. There was something suckling at one's sanity in this space, making one adjust for balance at every move.

To the left was a grand white piano, currently occupied.

Draco sat there, his eyes closed, his face focused, moving as he spilt the music, a frown forming. He swayed, though it was impossible to tell whether it was the room or his passion that caused it.  
His right hand played a melody, quite beautiful, quite unbalanced, uprooted and feeble filling the dizzying room, as the short stump on his left side moved uselessly to and fro, touching invisible fingers to inaudible keys.

Though the music wavered freely, there were corners it did not touch, there were areas it swirled around, inaudibly, and there were rooms it should not have been able to reach.

One of these was a bedroom on the second floor, done up in sunlight and rose-gold, where delicately coloured vertically striped silk lined its walls down to the cherry wood panels, which seamlessly trapped the burgundy carpet within its confines.  
Hidden behind the headboard of the golden four-poster bed was a small shelf, unnoticeable to everyone except to those who used it.

In the past it had carried wine bottles, incense holders, nosegays, temporary infertility potions, sleeping draughts or books.

Currently it only carried a black wooden walking stick, a silver snake head at its top, its emerald eyes gleaming with memories.

The bed's maroon curtains respectfully left it untouched, shielding it from dust and malice, remaining in place without complaint.

A wine red and butter yellow chaise longue stood with its back towards the bed, on it, a torn and now-single sleeved shirt lay half-folded, fully discarded.  
The side table beside it stood sternly. Empty.

Facing this furniture from the side was an ornate desk, constructed of mixed woods, its leather writing surface covered with official looking parchment that carried numbers which had never before been considered 'high' in this household.  
A cloak lay over the back of its chair, draped to just not touch to floor, as if its owner could come collect it any moment now.

In this room the piano music resonated, closing in from every direction, its speed and key varying like ocean waves, surrendering to and retreating from the beach.

Narcissa stood with her back to the chaise longue, to the bed, to the world, trying to remain focused.

She was in front of the opened wardrobe, its left door precisely angled, her posture perfect, and it was almost as if she wasn't alone.

And if she moved the right door just so... It was as if he had just spoken. As if the meaning of his words still hung in the air, as if he awaited her response, as if she could turn around and see him, have him there, cane in his hand and chin in the air.

Everybody leaves an impression.

Some by simply 'being', by repeat exposure, by history, love and meaning, their presence radiant by default.

Some by splitting their soul and cursing themselves, becoming a source of toxicity, trapping splinters of their followers by their loyalty, marring the manor with their combined warped energy.  
They had left a pit of damnation in the house's ancient energy and it was hurting.

She wasn't yet certain if she was thankful that her Lucius had become part of the scar tissue.

She trembled when she realised she was about to cave once more to his scent, which had only remained inside the wardrobe, in his clothes - so close - and when she leaned forward to inhale it, the feeling of his presence was gone.

She took too briefly to recover — she had been spending far too much time here, and there were potions to brew.

The music proceeded, a warped chordless melody, swarming her with its insistence to be heard, grating on her sense of responsibility which was already so raw these days.

Oddly enough, her son had not thrived in war.

He, too, had become scar tissue.

She had known from the start that he had been a victim, but she was only now starting to think that he might have died a little.

…that they might both have died a little.

She adjusted her posture and took a deep breath, trying to shake the gloom, but her composure cracked again when a note struck out of tune.

She had heard him play this piece flawlessly while intoxicated to a room full of murderers, even with the Dark Lord breathing down his neck.

For a few more seconds the melody continued, riddled with mistakes, before it devolved into a cacophony of frustration.

The following silence left the room exposed and, as she had no desire for other scars to confront her, she left to consider whether it was time to prepare them something to eat.

Pudding had always been his favourite.

When he was younger, whenever he was upset, a cake, tart, or pie was often all it took to make his face light up again.  
His enthusiasm at the mere idea of pastry could distract him from nearly anything.  
She had always provided him with it, in school. A care package a week, mostly home made, exactly to his taste.

In recent years, food hadn't interested him at all.

During his sixth year she had continued to send him what she could, though his responses had been flat, even in writing.  
Sometimes he hadn't written back at all.

And now they were home together, she knew how little he ate.

How little it did to him.

It had probably initially been the pressure of his tasks, the presence of the Others, the constant treading on eggshells in front of the Dark Lord… but all that had ended.

He had not even considered his freedom a cause for celebration and had rejected anything sweet.  
It wasn't that she wanted to fatten him, though the thought was tempting. (She had caught herself thinking that he was now so skinny that he had to pass through a door twice to enter a room.)

Perhaps, since their home was theirs again, it had been because he had started to realise the gravity of their new situation.  
The certainty of his Father's impending life sentence.  
Their relationship had always been somewhat unbalanced, but the preparations for his trial had brought them closer together. They had spoken more openly, more emotionally — they had never done that before.  
It had been bittersweet. . . . and far too briefly before the Dark Lord's final stupor had kicked them all in the teeth.

Now, it was as if an invisible Dementor held him by his missing hand.

She felt his winces, no matter how he masked them.  
It didn't matter whether he folded his sleeve, knotted it, put it in a pocket — sometimes there were movements that caused the brief hardening of his features, the sting of brightness in his eyes.  
There were potions he could take, there was a balsam he could use — she worked tirelessly to provide him with those.  
But there was nothing she could offer him when he had that split-second look of confusion at whatever item still lay in front of him, untouched, even though he'd moved his stump, nothing she could do to stop the sallowing of his face whenever he tried to cross his arms.  
When she went to embrace him he let her, but she could tell that he was only catering to her.

This was not surprising, as his body had to be such an foreign place to him these days, but the options she had to comfort him were so few and far in between.  
. . . and there was nobody left to comfort her.

These little heartbreaks rained down upon them ceaselessly.  
At this rate they would surely drown.


End file.
